late edit: DISCLAIMER: The pictured map is not actually a representation of the territories before colonisation. It’s a hypothetical map of what countries there might have been had the continent not been colonised, thus all the names and borders are fictional and have never existed.
For good actual maps, check out native-land.ca.
My wife is Ojibwe and her tribe illegally migrated several hundred miles west about one generation before Europeans arrived, taking land that belonged to other natives.
Every single person alive lives on land that has been “stolen” at least a time or two in our history. Focusing only on the horror of Europeans colonization is just one more way in which white people put themselves at the center of the human story.
I assure you that people with skin of every color have fought wars of conquest. It is not some special trick that only white Europeans could do.
Blaming white people for blaming white people is a bit odd. They get a lot of flak from all over.
@Pohl sure, but the reason European colonization of other places is focused on so much is due to scale and technology.
Scale and tech are what separates, say, the Shoah from Russian pogroms.
Scale and tech are also why so many people are still living with the aftermath. And that aftermath is why it’s still relevant.
Illegally? What law did they violate?
One from the Council of Three Fires?
I lived up there (northern MN and WI) and there’s a surprising amount of tension between Natives and Caucasians… then I found out that fact, that they’d come over and kicked out other tribes based on some wild rice vision, and was wtf?
Yeap, it was a mess before the Europeans got here
And there’s increasing evidence suggesting there might have been humans in the Americas before the ancestors of the modern first nations migrated here too, so they might even have mirrored the European colonization in their own way.
IMO it’s not productive to focus so much on who has historical grievances against whom. We should simply focus on providing support for whoever needs it most, regardless of how we got to the situation.
“Provide support to who needs the most” I could not agree more. Giving stuff for free is the worst way to “support” somebody, you lose track of what hardwork is. Give everybody oportunites, not because they are one color skin or another but because of how competent someone is.
@Compactor9679 level the playing field though. Not much use having the “opportunity” to invest a thousand dollars if you don’t have a thousand dollars.
Who said anything about investing 1K? Get to work and earn the 1K, dont thunk everybody ownes you anything becuase more than 200 years ago your family lost their land in a battle. If they lost that is too bad. If we look back enough everybody lost something at some point.
@Compactor9679 it was just a metaphor for unequal starting positions.
The reality is more to do with levels of education, health, parents with alcohol or prison, whether the early years are spent giving earnings to family etc. I just wanted an easy metaphor.
That said, mathematically the fact remains you can work hard your whole life and make smart decisions but never overtake a useless layabout who has money in a trust fund.
Going back to my metaphor, if I have $1000 and invest it now, and you have to wait 5 years to earn $1000 before you can invest yours in the same thing, I will come out ahead. “Time in the market.”
@Compactor9679 much worse one after they got there though.
If changing borders = a mess, then Europe itself was a mess too.